


(Home is where the heart is)

by SquaresAreNotCircles



Series: Five hundred hours [3]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Heavy pining, canon-typical levels of romantic undertones but can be read as platonic, excessive usage of brackets in writing but with purpose, slice of life-ish, steve is on his post-canon trip around the world and his thoughts totally never ever stray ever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:48:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23885467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SquaresAreNotCircles/pseuds/SquaresAreNotCircles
Summary: Every morning, Steve wakes up in a generic hotel room (kind of like the one he stayed in with Danny during their unfortunate weekend of couples counseling).Or: Steve takes some time for himself, (unsuccessfully) without Danny.
Relationships: Steve McGarrett & Danny "Danno" Williams, Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams
Series: Five hundred hours [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683592
Comments: 15
Kudos: 192





	(Home is where the heart is)

**Author's Note:**

> I had some fun with brackets! This is a companion piece to [Five hundred hours ‘til I am home](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23404816). You _can_ probably read this without having read that first, but it might make more sense if you have.
> 
> Tiny note for clarity: this is part of a series of fics that started with a 10.21 fix-it that was written before 10.22 aired, meaning this is a very slight AU in which Danny was never kidnapped and Steve did still leave for his solo trip to find himself, but there was never any mention of Catherine.

Every morning, Steve wakes up in a generic hotel room (kind of like the one he stayed in with Danny during their unfortunate weekend of couples counseling). He looks at the clock (an hour earlier in whatever time zone he’s in than what Danny considers the earliest acceptable time to be awake), gets up and makes the bed (“why would you make a bed if you’re just going to get back in it at the end of the day?”), and goes through his morning routine in the bathroom (which feels empty after a few months of getting used to Danny’s hair products crowding every horizontal surface). 

He has breakfast (but never pancakes, because none of them ever measure up) and then goes out and sees the sights, bakes on the beach, or just climbs the nearest mountain. (What would Danny think of spending over a century building one single church that never gets finished? Would Danny agree that people on Greek beaches are bigger assholes than people on Hawaiian beaches? How would Danny rate the hotdogs on Elmadağ, a tiny mountain outside of Ankara?) One cloudy day in Paris, he gets a little tired of sights and mountains and decides on a whim to run a marathon instead, which he sorely regrets the next day. (Danny would laugh indignantly over his stupidity, bitch at him at length about his stupidity, and then throw the aloe vera gel at him for his blisters. And for his stupidity.)

In Cape Town, he runs into Harry Langford and they hang out for a couple of days (which is nice but a little off balance, without Danny there to match Harry’s English drawl with pure dry Jersey wit). This chance meeting puts the idea of reunions into his head, so he flies to Madagascar to visit Max next (Danny would love Max’s dog, a terrier mix almost as yippy as Danny himself), then to Chin and Abby in San Diego (every time Chin smiles at Sarah or mentions her in conversation or even just tells her to go wash her hands before dinner, Steve is reminded of a different dad and his kids), from there to Los Angeles for Mary and Joan (just briefly, because Mary won’t stop saying how surprised she is he didn’t take Danny with him), and then to Denver, where he meets up with Kono (who takes him out drinking and makes him confess to things that he probably would have regretted saying a lot more the next morning if he could more than half remember what they were).

Wherever he is and whatever is going on, at some point in his day that overlaps with when the sun is up in Hawaii, he’ll touch base with Danny (but nothing else, because there’s invariably thousands of miles too many between them). It becomes the only true routine: either his phone alerts him to an incoming message (something he keeps expecting; that keeps making him think of seeing Danny’s name pop up on the screen and knowing Danny’s been thinking of him) or he texts Danny first (wondering, always, if Danny has adopted that same reflex where he involuntarily starts smiling when he sees who it is; a couple of times, when Danny writes back, it sounds just soft enough between the lines that maybe he has).

_You ever think of me out there?_ Danny asks once, tone of the words nearly wistful, if that were the kind of thing Danny ever is. 

_No more than usual_ , Steve texts back.

He drops the phone on his current nondescript bed (“You didn’t have to travel all the way to Denver for scratchy white sheets and subtly patterned carpet, you schmuck.”) and lies back on his pillows, allowing himself an unguarded moment to think about how after all these years, he still doesn’t know how to tell Danny anything but the God’s honest truth. To think about how quiet life without Danny would be. To think about how he’s pretty sure he’s going to end up in Jersey sooner or later at this rate, and how he wants to resent Danny for it, but deep down he’s way too excited for even that sliver of Danny’s actual presence.

(“You want my actual presence, Steve? You come home.”)

He will. He hasn’t quite figured it out yet, this whole big thing that has him carrying Danny with him in every step he takes (Danny would point out that the medical term might be _a heart_ ), but he can feel that he’s getting closer. 

Soon. He’ll be home (with Danny) soon.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! Comments are very cool and welcome, and I hope you’re all doing okay and not feeling caught (in brackets or otherwise). ❤
> 
> I’m on Tumblr as [itwoodbeprefect](https://itwoodbeprefect.tumblr.com), or with my exclusively H50 (and mostly McDanno) sideblog as [five-wow](https://five-wow.tumblr.com).


End file.
